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[gonna_owe_me]

Steve is really good at avoiding her.

Normally, she probably wouldn't even call it "avoiding."  Normally, she would call it his usual M.O. and chalk it up to being a side effect of being halfway around the world from each other.  There are times they've gone for months with no contact, and two weeks is barely the blink of an eye, particularly when she's busy and he keeps getting high-profile, high-priority cases.

At least, that's what she hears, when she hears anything at all.

But those weeks and months of zero contact, running silent, off the grid: those days aren't exactly applicable when there are extenuating circumstances such as A. they are living on the same island and B. she knows there's something he really doesn't want to talk to her about.

Ergo, avoidance.

She's not an impatient or nosy person, though, so she lets it slide, for a little while.  He clearly needs to get used to the idea himself, and, frankly, so does she.  It's not that they haven't stumbled across a situation where one or the other of them was out of commission for their normal arrangement, but in general, those interrupting factors were not potentially career-threatening.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a subordinate.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a partner.  Not seriously.

And it is serious, whether Steve is admitting to it, or not.  It's splashed across him like someone doused him in paint and sticky sunlight, in the way he'd magnetized towards the door, the way he'd run out after Danny.  Maybe even more because he didn't bring it up until he absolutely had to.

So Steve is avoiding her, and she can sympathize, because this is not a conversation she particularly wants to sit through, either, but it still needs to happen, because, knowing Steve, he hasn't told anyone else and is shutting it back into compartments poorly designed for a situation of this magnitude and complexity.  

Which is why, when she called him on the next weekend inferred to be Danny's weekend with Grace, she's given him the benefit of both giving her the slip for two weeks and the peace offering of meeting at a place with really excellent drinks, one of which she has in hand as she sits at a table by an open window, chin in her hand, looking out at the quietly rolling ocean.  It's early evening, and she's come off a twelve hour shift, so it's nice to sit, let her thoughts unhinge, ebb and flow with the waves and mild breeze.  Wrangling an affirmative had proved to be difficult, but she'd managed it, pointing out that they might as well meet out, seeing as they're definitely going to make it to the restaurant this time.

It strips him of the home field advantage, too, but he's not the only one who knows how to keep a wall at his back and a few tricks up his sleeve.

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[gonna_owe_me]

She glances appraisingly at the shrimp, then looks back up at him with her eyes innocuously wide, the picture of disbelieving delight. "For me?"

Suddenly girly and giggly in her tone, as if this actually were a date. Never mind the fact that if it had been, she never would have made it more than halfway down her drink, and he probably wouldn't have ordered at all. Never mind that they would already be in his truck, or maybe even at his house, stumbling and laughing, tripping over each others' feet until he'd give up and just sling her into his arms.

But it's not a night like that, so she drops the disingenuous act and grins with triumph as she snags the shrimp and pops it in her mouth with her shining eyes turned back to him and her nose wrinkling into an expression of affectionate amusement. "Don't have to ask me twice. Chow's better when it's not, strictly speaking, yours to begin with." Her head tips to one side, and she gives it some deep thought.

"Also, when someone else pays for it."

[thebesteverseen]

The laughter trips its way out of him, with a shake of his head, downing another long pull on his Longboard. Even when he feels like the ground is still laden with land mines, here, between them, in case the topic of conversation so much as listed in the direct of Danny again, he can't deny he's missed her.

That it's strange to see so much of her for so long, with work in the middle of it. But still missed her.

Beautiful and competent, able to slip in and out of business and fun like they are hats you pick up and put down. The latter always less important, but the one they got to get lost in, while knowing the first was the more important thing to both of them. The whole run through. Which makes it so much easier to tip his head, and razz back.

"Wait. You mean you aren't paying for this?" Hilariously beat shocked and so see-through about ribbing her for her own words. "Who asked who out to this thing, again?"

[gonna_owe_me]

Her mouth twists, and she considers the ceiling with exaggerated thoughtfulness. "See, you're saying I'm the one who should be forking over cash tonight, but what I'm hearing is, 'Oh, Cath, I'm sorry I never actually paid for a really nice dinner for you over the years, here, let me make it up to you.'"

Returning her eyes to his face, she shrugs, lips tucked into an expression that's nowhere near as neutral as it's attempting to be, partly because it's dimpling the corners of her mouth, more due to the way her eyes sparkle. "Or am I translating incorrectly?"

Okay. So he's an idiot. He's being an idiot, and if he gets caught, it'll spell ruin for both him and Danny, and might wind up tearing his task force apart. Not to mention it's so far against the rules part of her wonders if he hit his head really hard, knocked it against some blacktop or a criminal's skull, and forgot that whole part of who he is and what he does.

But it's still Steve. Still the goofball who let her take that ridiculous picture of him during some downtime. Still her friend. Still a loyal, dedicated officer.

In the end, it's not really a question where she's going to find herself standing.

[thebesteverseen]

"So, let me get this straight," Steve gestured with his beer bottle. Pointing to one side with the top, and then toward her. Like walking through the facts of a case, or the point on the wall. Like his eyes weren't dark blue and coolly, smoothly amused, even when stacking the deck and reading off his hand in flawless form. "I'm paying and I'm getting nothing out of it, this time?"

No Cath with her legs wrapped around him. Or smothering laughter in his shoulder, while literally challenging him to keep up or show up with his best seconds before or after it. Or the way her cool demeanor melts away until she can't stop the spill of words from her lips, and the words are echoing in the house with the sound of her voice, loud and shameless.

He doesn't think Danny would get it. His saying that. Especially now. Even if they aren't whatever are or aren't. But he's pretty sure she will. He doesn't really remember them all that clearly, but he can try to pull on how things were when she wasn't available in the past, even if it was only in ones or twos so far apart, the guys were usually gone by the time another half year or longer passed, before they ran into each other, again.

[gonna_owe_me]

Up goes one slim eyebrow. "You're the one who drew that line, sailor. Not me. Believe me, you're getting off easy."

Shrugging, she leans back with her own drink, now nearing the end, a few drops left among crystal, crushed ice. "You're going to have to call someone else for that tonight."

His -- whatever Danny is. Partner. Friend. Thing. Not his boyfriend. Something that might still end at any moment. "Besides, I'm pretty sure you owe me."

That eyebrow arches further, and is joined by the other in a silent challenge. He doesn't really want to go through a reckoning of all the favors he's asked for right now, surely.

[thebesteverseen]

He does. If not for years of working together, then for the fact she actually has the truth in her hands. The kind of truth that could break a number of lives. A number of careers. And there's no part of him that thinks she would, or will. Because he knows her, at least as well as he's ever known anyone. All the lasting things, if not all of the fleeting ones.

She wouldn't. Jeopardize either of his careers. Their careers. Five-0. Danny's court case. All of which she'd been smart enough to throw together and at his head like quick fire rounds. He does owe her for that in the least. Even if it can't relaxe the muscles between his shoulders entirely, even then.

Not even the strange, awkward, warm rush that jets into his stomach about calling Danny can. Just the thought of it. It didn't even have to be for sex, like they were imply. Just to hear him ramble about what he did with Grace for the last two days and complain about Rachel, like it didn't mean he was announcing he missed his daughter like he'd lost how to breathe already, again, seconds after she got picked up.

Just to hear his voice. Which is something -- he can't even name or explain, only push down, push back wherever it came from.

When he plays at considering it. Her prompting. Stony brow and slight movement of his head back and forth, vision clouding like he was deep in thought, like he's toying with the additions and subtractions of any equation before, he pressed his lips and squints his eyes just barely. "That mean you want to follow this all up with dinner, then?"

He, actually, doesn't even sound horribly against it. It's just a flat, checking, question, that could go either way.

Even if the question can't help having some humor to it. Dinner. That they never made. Would they need to ever?

[gonna_owe_me]

"If you don't have to rush off anywhere."

Which could be, can be, taken any number of ways: if work calls either of them, that's it, sure, but whether he'll admit to the term boyfriend or not, she's willing to bet that if Danny were to call right now, he'd be gone. And that's okay. It's how it should be, if he's got somebody. She doesn't begrudge him his time or the minutes or hours or days or weeks he spends with someone else; time is a commodity like any other, and there'll always be more, as long as things go mostly right and no tragedy strikes.

It's not like she's about to head back off on a cruise, anyway. "Girl's gotta eat sometime."

And she can put it away with the best of them, but really, it's more about this: watching him, the smile on his face, the way he's relaxed back into his chair, enough to tease her. Comfortable, like they always are.

Why rush off when they're just getting back into the old stride again?

[thebesteverseen]

"I don't have anything, until, oh-" Steve tipped his left arm, making a show of checking watching.

And only barely just checking it for real. "-dawn." Work, Five-0. Getting in a swim first.

Which was mostly true. It was the end of the weekend and he had no idea really if Danny would be stopping by. When Rachel would get Grace back, or whether Danny would even want to. Especially after how awkward, long winded, and blown out that had gotten two weeks ago. They hadn't discussed it. Which left him uncertain about it, too.

Whether it wasn't true. Whether Danny would try to show up, only to find him out. When he would want to be there, if, but it's not actually a bad idea to be here. For several of the reasons she's mentioned. And means he moves from looking at his watch, to raising a hand and flagging a convient bus-boy walking by.

Winning smile, pressing straight into good natured, easy come, easy go. "Can we get two of your menu's?"

[gonna_owe_me]

"All that downtime?"

Amused, remembering days, weeks, months when free time and liberty was nothing but a fantasy shared by everyone else on the boat, a far-off dreamland that might as well not exist at all, for all the good it did them in the middle of drill or duty.

She's paused as Steve flags the boy down, gives the kid a smile and a thanks when he finds a couple of the laminated menus to hand them before disappearing, presumably to tell their waitress to come check on them again. Which is good, and the whole idea is a nice one, if a little alien. Dinner, with Steve, where nothing else is expected or will come. When it's literally just the two of them, hanging out as friends, old friends, comfortable with each other, catching up on the lives they've both only seen bits and pieces of throughout the last years.

Not that there's much on her end, and she has to time her attack correctly in order to get anything out of him. This will require a delicate kind of precise offensive, but at least he's a captive audience. Even Steve wouldn't ditch her with the check unless it was for something important.

"So not expecting any visitors tonight?"

Not that Danny was exactly expected before, but that's not really the point.

[thebesteverseen]

That's an easy one to read into, and maybe she does have as much right to ask, poke a little.

At least as Steve has to assume in whether Danny will show because of what happened two weeks ago. It's not like she keeps Danny's schedule, or has ever had a reason to. Certainly not the two different ones Steve has, the conveniently fit into each other lately, so that he knows when to place something out there and when not to. Weekends and, now, court dates.

"Danny has Grace this weekend," is said middle of the road, when he's skimming down the plastic menu like that could be any kind of normal conversation. A general sort of answer, for a general sort of fact. Because Danny did. Have Grace this weekend. Until some point this evening. Which had nothing to do with him.

[gonna_owe_me]

"That extends to Sunday night, now?"

Casual. It doesn't mean anything, Steve. It's just conversation. If anyone has a right to be curious about this whole situation, it's her, surely.

She keeps her eyes on the menu, skimming past the appetizers and salads to entrees. She could really use some red meat after all the fish she's been indulging in. "I would have thought he'd be getting less time, not more."

Depending. On whether or not his ex is passive aggressive, or if the court's trying to lean on him by cutting visitation for the most minor and fictional of reasons.

Glancing up, she tops it off with: "You have any idea what's good, here?"

Because this is just a normal conversation, normal curiosity, not the interrogation of earlier.

Mostly.

[thebesteverseen]

The first comment doesn't go unnoticed, but it's so close to the second that he has to go there, first.
Steve raised his eyes from the menu, a touch of dry sardonicism there. "That would be a scene worth seeing."

He'd love to see that. What happened to the person who even attempt to infract on Danny's time with Grace. Steve wouldn't dream of it. He'd give them the run of the house, or tickets to something Grace wanted. But there was no actively pulling Danny from Grace. It was like trying to pull the moon out of orbit.

And the person who got in the way of that would get so much hell. Waving hands, pointing finger, booming words.
Fierce and loud, to cover up the terror that someone would actually manage to take anymore of Grace from him.

The way this whole court drama must have been eating at him, when he rarely let it, except to get prickly.

"The fish is usually good to go with. They do it fresh daily." Even night should still be.

[gonna_owe_me]

She demurs, considering the menu with intent curiosity. "I think I feel like something bloody."

There's plenty of decent looking steak choices, and she flips back and forth between a few options before settling on a New York strip steak from Kualoa and putting the menu down to finish off her drink, forearms on the table-top. She stirs the ice that's left, and picks up where she left off.

"So, not to the making plans stage, yet?"

Come on, Steve. She's dying for something interesting to talk about. The problem with living on a boat with the same group of people for months at a time is that the gossip turns stale: the same people hooking up, fighting, causing strain or gaining popularity. It gets old.

This? This might not ever get old. Danny Williams, steadfast cop, loyal partner, mouthy Jersey emigrate, who is first of all into boys, and secondly, into Steve.

She's got plenty of questions, and all the time in the world to ask them.

[thebesteverseen]

He loves that about her, which is probably why his mouth goes wide, grinning loopy in a way that can't possibly actually be about the food on the menu he's looking at. No one loves food that much. But he really does love certain things about her. Her appetite, in several manners, and things she considers good, that on anyone else you'd think might be posturing, but it was just her.

Rare steak and sports and holding her own against sailors without losing this softer edge. Or draining off her ability to point and poke, the way she does with those words. Getting him to flick his eyes up from a Surf n' Turf for her question. Not so much his head lifting. Just his gaze lifting, brow slightly heavy with some consideration to the fact it's not like they planned much.

The two of them. He and Cath. Some things, some times, depending on the length of time, of the necessity of having to find midway stopping points, arrival and departures to make. But not lately. Then it was just boats and docking and if still. When there's something flippant and derisive, and almost low-grade humoring when he shrugs. Eyes dropping back, and decides to at least give her, "It hasn't been that long."

Because that's better than it might never. It might still fizzle out tonight or tomorrow. It might just end, suddenly, still.

[gonna_owe_me]

"A month's nothing to sneeze at."

Not for them, anyway. She's got no idea what Danny's background or track record is; suspects it's better than either of theirs, at least in regards to the ability to maintain relationships that last more than a few days, a week at most.

They've never been exclusive, and she's never pried -- professional necessity, before -- but she'd gathered that Steve, like her, hadn't really ever gone past those few days or a week's time limit, but this? He'd said a couple of weeks before, and that was a couple of weeks ago, and that's at least a month, maybe more, since Steve could well have been fudging his answer.

She's interrupted by the waitress, who smiles brightly, and doesn't bat an eyelash at Cath's instructions to cook her steak rare, nods when Cath nods to Steve's beer and adds one to her own order, but that's fine. She's feeling better now, relaxed, and there's plenty of time to discuss all of this over dinner, when even Steve would find it awkward to run.

[thebesteverseen]

He really doesn't give much for that one. "Most of it was still work."

But the distraction really doesn't distract him much. Even when he points to one of the other steaks, forgoing the shellfish. Even as he's detailing how true that answer actually is. How much that answer will never change, too.

Rehabilitation while benched taking up a good portion of the last week and half, until it really was more a farse that Danny needed rest and not to be overexert himself. Which he proved by doing just that. But that didn't change the fact a lot of it was work, and a lot of that work had to be as flawless as Five-0 ever really got to.

There was still keeping tabs on Kono and her weekly psyche evals, sans the details, doctor-patient confidentially and all, from her mandatory therapist. Chin, and Malia's recovery from home now, where things were getting better by the week. And then the rest of their actual job. Looking out for Honolulu, running, at a seconds' notice, the moment the phone rang.

Making sure that anything that happened, off the books and under the table, no matter how not-casual it was being comported as, stayed that way. Off the books. Under the table. Out of the sight of anyone else figuring it out. Which was how it was. Except for Cath.

[gonna_owe_me]

"You know, I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually work by adding up all the minutes that aren't spent doing other things," she points out, once the waitress has left with their orders. "If anything, I'd say that makes it more impressive. Work has a way of derailing things."

If you let it. And they always had, in a way she'd sort of assumed they always would, but Steve hasn't. Even knowing what will probably happen. He's still either letting it happen or helping it along, not letting it drift into the daily grind, the chaos and confusion, the adrenaline rush and subsequent let-down after a mission goes off without too many hitches.

He's making it happen. They both are. Must be. It's the only way, and yet here he is, not quite defensive but certainly reserved in a way that makes her want to push every button she can find until he cracks and she can see what's really going on, here. "Especially considering, I mean --"

She tongues her teeth for a second, because this actually is kind of awkward, then feels a sudden and not entirely charitable flash of envy that Danny hadn't been the one getting interrogated by Doris in a safe house, and pushes past the slight waver. "I had no idea he swung that way."

Didn't he have a girlfriend, the last time they met? She's fairly sure she remembers him wondering what to get the girl for Valentine's Day.

[thebesteverseen]

He doesn't say it has to work like that. Not while he's putting his menu away, or picking up his beer an catching another swallow while she settles and he wonders why he hadn't saw this as being the topic for dinner, when the topic of dinner had seems so joke worthy. It has to be though. Time spent added up like that. Especially in this situation.

Work has to come first. He has to keep making sure that it does, and that it is uninterrupted. There isn't room for doubt.

Steve gave a raise of eyebrows for her pause, whatever it is that's gumming up her making a point. When so many of hers were so fast, pinpointed clear. Until she says it and there is a rueful sort of rise to the edges of his while he pushed his lips together, a slightly nod given with it all.

"Yeah." Steve rubbed his mouth, before giving a small wave of his hand. "He didn't either."

Or. Steve. Steve was pretty positive in every single way that one could be that he didn't. And he was aware Danny really didn't fit into many of things he'd once gone looking for. Loyal, hardworking, and solid, yeah. But toe-headed and redefining mouthy, emotional and brand new to all of this.

But Danny was the one thing he couldn't get out of his head. Burn out of his skin before now, and especially now.

[gonna_owe_me]

"No?"

It comes with a frown that can't quite make up its mind whether it's confused or just faintly disapproving. Look, she's not going to tell anyone who they should or shouldn't sleep with, outside the bounds of pointing out the obvious rules and possible sinkholes, but it's not like knowing these things wouldn't make it all a little easier. Isn't this situation complicated enough?

Apparently not, and she spends a second congratulating herself on managing to avoid this level of complexity, before the waitress comes back with her beer, which she accepts with a smile. Lifting the bottle to take a sip, she pauses, a strange half smile teasing at one corner of her mouth.

"Then again, you'd be enough to make anyone reassess their preferences."

Eyes sparkling, knowing it's a compliment, but not, too -- it's just fact. Steve is, objectively speaking, a slam-dunk in the looks department. He's got it all: the build, the eyes, the smile, the classic features, plus a little something extra -- the way he holds himself, the way his military bearing can relax into the boy-next-door in the space of a single breath. It's a difficult combination to resist, and she suspects that more than one guy who considered himself pretty firmly in the 'likes ladies' department has had to think twice around Steve. It's not like these thinks are cut and dry.

[thebesteverseen]

It's...cute. Drags his mouth crooked, lopsided, wide, and just a little too tight right at the corners.

Taking the obvious, and in some ways, oblivious, compliment, even when some part of him squirms from it, like the ground became oil slick. Letting it settle in as something as arrogant as it is plastic, and maybe even more humoring than accepting, or enjoying. The oil slickening a layer on top of everything in his stomach. Like that could be it.

Simple reason. Simple to start, simple to end. Except. None of that has changed in the last two years. Not the first year. Not last year. Definitely, not suddenly in the last month. The only difference was that he left to find Shelburne and ended up with Wo Fat, briefly, and his mother, instead. And Danny trying to kill a coffee cup, when only weeks earlier he'd been on the sand with Grace, Gabby and that butterfly.

He doesn't have any idea how it happened. How Danny's words about being pissed as hell, about wanting him near slipped into dreams, into fantasties, became this. Maybe, that's the reason her beer gets a toast tipped toward it, but her words only get a rueful twist of lips around the top of his bottle as he's draining his.

[gonna_owe_me]

So. Not something to joke about.

Not that any of this is, but that normally would have gotten a smug, arrogantly pleased smile and a confirmation of her words that would have her arguing the point she just made and laughing while she did it, but that's not this. This strange little smile that isn't a smile, that looks more wry than amused, that doesn't reach his eyes or warm them, just leaves them looking faintly harried.

So what does that mean? He's the one who works with detectives, not her, and she's not trained to read facial expressions, just computer read-outs and strategies and layouts. But she knows Steve, and she knows that this isn't in his usual rotation, when it comes to his various conquests.

Which means Danny's not a conquest.

It adds up to everything else, the defensiveness, the tiny smiles that seem to be mostly unconscious, the reluctance to talk about it, even to her. This, this is something new. "Don't worry," she says, easily, even as this newest information slots into place. "I'm sure he likes you for more than your good looks and total lack of charm."

[thebesteverseen]

That at least does get an eye roll out of him, dragging up some flippant fondness and warmth back into his hazel eyes, while he's reaching across to place the empty bottle by the side of the table. Errant debate on a second one or a glass of water. Probably a second.

Even when he's shaking his head and letting his mouth curve back closer toward sardonic, "Not if you listen him. I'm sure he'd be glad to give to give you a run down on every single thing I've done wrong this past week, and how many hundreds of times he's nearly died just since getting off the bench, if you just asked."

And maybe, he meant that to come out sardonic, and sarcastic, and maybe it did. But maybe it came out with some affection warped in and wrapped warm, and perverse, but there, right along with the rest of that mess. Danny wasn't about to compliment him if the world wasn't falling apart. Or Danny wasn't. Either, or, really.

[gonna_owe_me]

Her smile broadens, amusement flickering like sunshine over rippling water. "Yeah, I remember."

The way Danny and Steve had turned that silent auction into a pissing match, and she'd been tempted to hand them a ruler along with a snide remark. In retrospect, it's probably best that she'd restrained herself. "Unfortunately, I don't have that much time to kill, so I'll have to bypass the lecture. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm the last person he wants to talk to right now. Especially about you."

She hasn't forgotten the way Danny held himself so stiffly in the kitchen, as if he wanted to push right through the cupboards and shelves to get further away from her, every muscle tense, shoulders stiff, words terse. Nothing like the expansive man she'd met that night of the benefit, somehow still making a neatly cut suit look like work clothes. "So there's really no fear of that happening."

[thebesteverseen]

"Nah," Steve batted that back, easily. Brushing that concern aside, fast. "He'd be fine now."

He would. It was nothing. They'd cleared that up. Even if Danny didn't do the same kind of thing, he'd at least gotten that what had gone on between him and Cath wasn't the kind of thing Danny did. Not like with Rachel or Gabby. That whatever it had been, and however long it had lasted, it wasn't right now.

He'd stopped it. Even if he hadn't mentioned to Danny it'd been right on the edge of kissing Catherine. He wasn't entirely as dense as Danny made him out to be sometimes. He hadn't been about to mention it that night, while Danny looked to have developed fractured cracks anytime they mentioned it. Especially when he'd been on the lawn. Making faces Steve could get to leave his mind even now.

[gonna_owe_me]

He'd be fine? He'd be fine now?

The look she gives him is dubious bordering on pitying. "You really don't know how this works, do you?"

She and Steve don't have what might be considered an orthodox sort of relationship, and she's fairly sure Steve and Danny don't, either, but even Steve should probably recognize the fact that emotions don't work the same way logic does, that one conversation smoothing things over is really just the beginning of a series of similar conversations, and that, no matter how cool Danny is with the idea -- which he probably isn't -- or how much they might like each other as people, no one is going to be comfortable with the person their current...whatever...was fooling around with previously.

Particularly if that 'previously' stretched across years and run-ins with other people.